LITMIR.BIZ

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puzzled. It was no longer a secret that my wife had defected to the East in an elaborate and successful scheme that had encouraged widespread grassroots opposition to the communist rulers. I’d heard other people speak of my wife’s profound achievements and I’d always nodded it through. This time I didn’t. ‘What did she do?’ I asked him.

      He smiled. He had one of those rubber-mask faces that relax naturally into a grin. It was an old-fashioned face: the sort Hollywood used to cast as a priest who plays the harmonica and says wise things to Bing Crosby.

      ‘You’ve got to understand how it has always been for the Church in Germany,’ he said. ‘Countless small principalities, the religion of each of them decided by its ruling prince or bishop. That ensured that the Church and State were indivisible. Even in Nazi times, the State’s tax-gathering officers collected Church dues from every citizen and paid them to the Church. Little wonder that we churchmen found it so difficult to confront the Nazis, and then after the war even more difficult to resist the institutionalized anti-Christ of communism. We became dependants of the State. But your wife told the Churches of all denominations that if this monstrous regime under which we suffer is ever to be resisted and overthrown, the rallying places must be sanctuaries offered by the Church: the German churches.’ He sipped his coffee. The kid and I were silenced by this display of emotion. The pastor added: ‘Lenin said “Whoever controls Germany, possesses Europe.” This will be the last place the communists yield.’

      His passionate speech had made me uneasy, but such deeply held feelings were needed by anyone confronting the communists in their police-State. For lately the politicians here had seen what was happening to their fellows – the communist crooks who were running the neighbouring countries – and were beginning to identify the Churches as their most dangerous enemy.

      ‘I say a prayer for her,’ said the pastor. ‘All my flock say a prayer for her. Cherish her.’

      ‘Yes,’ I said.

      ‘It will be getting light,’ said the kid. He’d been shuffling about as if made uncomfortable by this high-flown talk.

      ‘You are too young to understand,’ said the pastor gently. ‘Only old men know enough to cry.’

      Suddenly I remembered where I’d last seen the pastor. He’d been at a big fancy-dress party at Lisl Hennig’s hotel in West Berlin. It was the night when everything seemed to go wrong. My wife was brought out of the East that night. We were involved in a stupid gun battle on the Autobahn and I saw Tessa my sister-in-law murdered. That night I left Germany and solemnly vowed I would never come back here. Never. ‘Yes, I remember you now,’ I told the pastor. ‘That party in the hotel near the Ku-Damm.’ Amid that frantic collection of revellers, in his dark clerical suit and dog-collar, I had taken the pastor for just another guest in fancy dress. Perhaps his presence there that night supplied one of the missing pieces of the jigsaw puzzle that was still far from complete.

      ‘Yes, I was there that night,’ he admitted. He’d been about to add something else but now he stopped suddenly as we heard the sound of vehicles coming along the road. Several of them. They slowed and turned into the cobbled churchyard where we had left the Volvo in the barn. I hoped they wouldn’t search the premises, for the Volvo with its West licence plates would make them start tearing everything apart.

      ‘Pray!’ said the pastor and dropped to his knees. I heard them more clearly now. Two vehicles: one heavy diesel and one petrol. There were loud squeaks and the hiss of hydraulic brakes. A car door opened and slammed. That meant one person. It was a bad sign. I had no doubt that the heavy truck contained an armed assault team of barrack-police who were now sitting silent and alert and waiting for orders. ‘Pray!’ said the pastor again, and I sank down on my knees before him, as did the kid and the woman who’d made the coffee.

      The pastor began a droning litany of prayers as metal boot studs sounded on the stone steps. With a stifled groan of pain the woman got to her feet, rubbed her arthritic knee, and went to receive the visitor with a soft and deferential greeting on her lips and a cup of hot coffee in her hand. ‘Is something wrong?’ she asked him.

      ‘Yes,’ said the cop without explaining further. He sipped the coffee.

      ‘A night of continuous prayer,’ she said, and explained our presence as bereaved parishioners from a neighbouring town. She had a strong local accent and as the explanation continued I could follow it only with difficulty.

      Out of my half-closed eyes I could see the policeman standing feet apart staring at us. His uniform revealed him as a local cop, sent no doubt to lead a team of outsiders from Magdeburg – draftees perhaps – who didn’t know the country districts. Impatient toots of a car horn made the cop look at his watch. Then there was the sound of another car door and the hurried clatter of boots. ‘You haven’t got time for cups of coffee,’ came a shout from the top of the stone steps. The unseen commander – disconcertingly accurate in his guess about the coffee – had a voice that was hard and Berlinerisch, the accent that educated urbane men use to command those they regard as country bumpkins.

      Jolted by the accusation the cop pushed the coffee cup back into the woman’s hand. ‘All is in order here, Captain,’ the policeman shouted, and started back up to join his commander. The German Democratic Republic – more realistically an undemocratic dictatorship run by the Soviets – was changing. Out here in the country districts some of the more cautious officials had begun hedging their bets against the day when the unthinkable happened, and their beat became part of a truly democratic republic with all the dangerous consequences such a turn-round could bring to those in rural isolation.

      ‘You need not pretend to pray any more,’ said the pastor when the sound of the two vehicles had dwindled to nothing.

      ‘I wasn’t pretending,’ I said. The old man looked at me and rose to his feet.

      There was just a thin line of purple along the skyline as we got back on the road. The kid was driving: I wanted to look around.

      ‘The pastor is a decent old man. His family had a big estate here. They were landowners since goodness knows when. He volunteered for the U-boats,’ said the kid. ‘After the war, when he was released from the POW camp in England he came back and found that the family estate had been confiscated without compensation. It was rotten luck. The Russians only seized farms larger than 250 acres and theirs was only a few acres larger than that.’

      ‘Then he found God,’ I said.

      ‘No, that’s the funny thing. He became a fervent communist at first. It was only afterwards that he went back to the Church and then started working against the regime.’

      ‘It happens.’

      ‘He said he used to think that Karl Marx was an economist. It was when he realized that Marx was a moralist that he began to see how deeply the theories were flawed.’ When I made no response to this he said: ‘Have you read Marx?’

      ‘Karl Marx was a nut,’ I said. ‘He should have kept his mouth shut like Harpo.’

      ‘We’ll be in Berlin early. Do you want to return the gun to your friend?’

      ‘Didn’t I tell you to forget about the gun?’

      I’d let my anger show. ‘Sorry, boss.’

      ‘I must get rid of it. I’m glad you reminded me.’

      ‘Is it the shooting you’re worried about?’

      ‘Who said I was worried?’

      ‘You did everything exactly right,’ he said, with an exuberance calculated to cheer me up. ‘It was terrific.’

      ‘But it smells all wrong,’ I said. ‘Who were those bruisers?’

      ‘In a shiny new 500 SEL Merc? They were Stasis or left-behind KGB or something. They weren’t innocent peasants on their way to church, if that’s what’s worrying you.’

      ‘They did nothing except drive along a public road. I shot holes in them.’

      ‘You

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